UK’s Royal Mint Launches Gold-Backed Cryptocurrency

The UK’s Royal Mint, the institution responsible for producing all the physical money the country has for circulation, has announced the launch of its own gold-backed cryptocurrency.

The Blockchain-based coin, called Royal Mint Gold (RMG), is a digital representation of gold stored in The Royal Mint vault.

The Royal Mint Bullion, the Royal Mint company that sells physical gold, is the first company to allow customers to hold gold-backed assets on Blockchain, Tom Coghill, RMG’s Commercial Lead, stated in an interview with Express.co.uk. Coghill also mentioned that one RMG coin is equal to one gram of gold, adding that “it’s real gold you’re holding when you’re holding our RMG.”

A recent report published by the World Gold Council (WGC) compared Bitcoin and gold, declaring that though Bitcoin saw a higher growth in value in 2017, gold would remain an important store-of-value investment.

Coghill claimed that Bitcoin investments are more uncertain than investments in gold:

“Gold has probably had an argument that it’s been a store of value for 6,000 years, bitcoin’s a bit younger and the future of bitcoin is uncertain.”

The RMG project was first unveiled by the Royal Mint in December 2016.

The UK is not the only country to create a precious metals-backed cryptocurrency. Last week local sources in Australia reported that the country’s largest precious metal refinery, Perth Mint, was set to develop its own cryptocurrency backed by physical precious metals.